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Kassadin, am I doing it wrong?

Its rather easy to keep the price down for excessive appearing AP compared to AD using a Mejai's and no Occult. Something more comparable would have been: AP (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Kassadin/1ac28f6f5a47e45b8d8145f00bf62fdc) vs AD (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Kassadin/103a5d4dbfdbc67f7f5b4e9f50cf220f)

Except, I'd really never consider building that way for DPS, considering I've been saying Hybrid is exceptionally more effective for a while now. Using both aspects of the champion.

End stage build, which is what you were showing the items for, here's two, one AP and one Hybrid of approximate cost.

If you really want to compare to one focus or the other, a Link to a DPS Build (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Kassadin/4675d6b45585c8f24976ca61fa57b07c). Though I'd refuse to play this exclusion of the full capabilities type build.

The other poster had it right, Rod of Ages>Mejai's in most cases. The only time a Mejai's outshines a RoA is if you can keep full stacks, which is one of those things everyone says they can do when they are on the forums, but in game is another story. I'll take 650 more health, 725 mana and 110 AP over 180 ap and 15% movement speed. (again assuming you can keep a full stack which isn't likely unless you are playing vs. lesser competition)

Well the first thing I see that you've done wrong is Zhonya's/Mejai's. A successful Kassadin needs three things, health/mana/magic pen. Don't underestimate the magic pen. For example, buying Sorc Shoes gives you more damage then a blasting wand. If a team is stacking magic resist, you want a void staff. You need to have a lot of mana so you can continuously unleash your spells in burst damage in a team fight. Also, more health allows you to actually survive to the end of a team fight where Kassadin's true power comes out, chasing people down.

You should die rarely when you play Kassadin. Your job is to flash straight to the back of the fight where the enemies DPS is located and unleash hell on them. You can't kill them right off the bat though. Once they switch focus to you you haul ass outta there. Then they refocus on the fight because they can't catch you. Thats when you flash back in to clean up the job. A lot of health makes this strategy more viable seeing as the enemy DPS won't be able to weaken you to a point of actually being able to kill you. Even at low health, you should linger on the out sides of fight and wait for an opportunity to flash in and grab a kill. With Kassadin's burst damage usually I'm the only getting the last hits. I'm the KS'er.

Notice the game is very situational. If I'm having no problems taking too much damage then I go Zhonya's. Usually though, Kassadin needs the health and a Riftwalk that slows is never a bad thing.

Boots depends on enemy CC. As Kass you should never die, unless they have 3 stuns they all use on you. In which case, merc treads save the day. My average game with Kassadin looks something like 8-1-4 or somewhere around there. 15-3 or 15-4 for longer games. The longer the game goes usually adds to an increase in assist to kill ratio.

Edit:
Mejai's is a pretty worthless item for Kass since the nerf but if the game is going pretty good I do pick it up. There's nothing worse then having to rely on stacks late game though.

This is soooo true...

I personally prefer getting boots1 and catalyst at the same time, then finishing the RoA, then getting a tear of the goddess (me likey extra mana!), then the sorc boots, then finishing my Archangels staff. The only way you can rationalize getting a Mejai's over a RoA is you know you wont be dying, which means you are getting assists and not kills. Anyone who goes for kills risks dying, it happens even to the best Kassadins. You only need to die once after getting stacks on your Mejai's to make a RoA a better buy. The RoA assists in getting kills because the extra mana and life allow you to get the kills and get out of dodge so to speak. the other instance where a Mejai's is good is if you want to build an AD Kass, which Mejai's meshes with very well to increase your pop fairly cheaply.

Games usually end shortly after I put that Archangel's together but if not I'll do either a Void Staff or an Abyssal Scepter depending on team makeup then I start making a Lichbane, which only 1/10 games I get this far ever gets completed.

Once you have 5 minutes with that RoA, you will simply dominate any enemy caster not named fiddlesticks 1v1, (you can beat fiddle 1v1 by level 12 or so, but it generally isn't worth your time and nothing even remotely close to the guarantee any other ranged dps/support/caster will be, so ignore him) your target preference is enemy caster/support<>enemy ranged dps<>enemy melee dps/tanks. Nothing finer then rifting in and bursting Kayle so hard she has to shield herself, then Twitch popping to do his thing and you go burst him when he has no shield so he goes splat.

Really my only problem with this build is I seem to marginalize the yellow and blue rune slots. Mana/level is fairly worthless, as you will have plenty of mana just from your item build. Mana regen is equally as worthless as it wont add anything noticeable. I run with some combination of either health/level, cooldown reduction or AP/level even though AP/level are basically useless runes, as I honestly do not notice a difference between the different rune pages so I run with whatever I had in that page for the last caster since caster means reds and quints are always magic pen and movement speed.

Rod of Ages gives 80 AP, 650 HP and 725 Mana after 15minutes when you purchased for 3k gold.

Mejai's gives anywhere from 36-100 mana on average for 1235 gold.

Atleast know the items before posting.

Avoiding Zhonya's for AP, or even some Hybrid, builds is lulz-worthy on its own.

Mejai's gives mana? Really?

I'll assume you just typed something incorrectly like I did instead of mocked me for doing something you then proceeded to do yourself. I don't avoid Zhonya's because I don't want more AP, I avoid it because I tend to live long enough that the 1200-1300 or so mana you have as Kass without +mana items (which you wont have if you go Mejai's<>Zhonya's<>something else) forces me to blue pill back to base after every fight and I prefer the staying power the extra mana gives me over the extra 60-120 AP.

Its rather easy to keep the price down for excessive appearing AP compared to AD using a Mejai's and no Occult. Something more comparable would have been: AP (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Kassadin/1ac28f6f5a47e45b8d8145f00bf62fdc) vs AD (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Kassadin/103a5d4dbfdbc67f7f5b4e9f50cf220f)

I wasnt trying to point out the difference in AP at all. In fact I didnt even give the # difference because of the volatility of Mejai's. Was more a comparison of the survivability and melee damage output ability since that is really what this comparison comes down to. And I didn't pick out the dps items, you did. I don't have any experience building him that way so I went with what you had suggested previously in the thread.

Quote:

Echo7:

Except, I'd really never consider building that way for DPS, considering I've been saying Hybrid is exceptionally more effective for a while now. Using both aspects of the champion.

End stage build, which is what you were showing the items for, here's two, one AP and one Hybrid of approximate cost.
Link to AP Build. (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Kassadin/6bca3c3ec1ef5527139118730f8f1743)
Using your own choices for main AP items, and then the next to standard RoA to fill out the slots.
Link to Hybrid Build. (http://leaguecraft.com/builder/Kassadin/0168374019c0f4347e37f0628a85deb1)

About half the burst from abilities and about four times the DPS.

How is this four times the dps? Im looking and I see a whopping .2 attack speed increase and a damage increase from 121 to 212. You might have a much better crit chance (40%) but even so I dont think we can really base DPS off of the damage you can do potentially. Also, since both builds include a Mejai's I feel its fair to point out that this '4x dps' build has ~350 less ap. That means that in order for your build to deal as much damage as the AP build would in two spells (sphere and wave) you're going to have to get in at least 2-3 melee attacks per pair of nukes. In addition, this build actually has less Hp than the AP build, granted not by much but how you intend to stay 'in the mix' and deal damage is beyond me.

So, I actually did try some of your builds last night in two different games. I wont go in depth about specifics but would like to say that although the extra beefyness was nice, I easily noticed a difference in damage delt and had at least two situations where an enemy got back under their tower with a sliver of hp. Now this could be explained by it being early game still, by teamwork ,enemy skill or any other factor you can think of but it felt to me that if I'd had just a little more ap damage I would have gotten those kills. Will test more tonight and tomorrow!

P.s.

Quote:

schleppy:

The other poster had it right, Rod of Ages>Mejai's in most cases. The only time a Mejai's outshines a RoA is if you can keep full stacks, which is one of those things everyone says they can do when they are on the forums, but in game is another story. I'll take 650 more health, 725 mana and 110 AP over 180 ap and 15% movement speed. (again assuming you can keep a full stack which isn't likely unless you are playing vs. lesser competition)